# Any resources for book recommendations?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-resources-for-book-recommendations/203264>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [September 23, 2003, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-resources-for-book-recommendations/203264 "2003-09-23T06:57:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![II\_Gyan\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@II\_Gyan\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/II_Gyan_II)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2003, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-resources-for-book-recommendations/203264/1 "2003-09-23T06:57:18Z")

</div>

Currently, the only (searchable) site on the net where I can get an opinion on a book is Amazon. Amazon also has the listmania and “customers buying this book bought these as well” guides. These help to evaluate the network of related books. I remember coming across another site where upon entering one’s preferences, one got a list of recommended books, but whose name I can’t recollect now.

Are there any such sites anymore? Ones that guide you on related books, based on a certain starting point and/or where users aggregate reviews on various books they’ve read recently. Preferably _non_-fiction.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2003, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-resources-for-book-recommendations/203264/2 "2003-09-23T11:05:02Z")

</div>

I’m not sure what you mean by “searchable.” Dropping the title and author into Google usually turns up a number of reviews on most books. (Admittedly, about 80% of them tend to be copied from a single source.) I haven’t looked in a while, but I thought Barnes & Noble had a review section similar to Amazon’s.

[The New York Times Review of Books](http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/) is on-line.

I was surprised to find that [The New York Review of Books](http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/) does not have a search feature, but I also found that with the Google Toolbar installed, the “Search this site” options works quite effectively on the NYRB.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Aankh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ebca7d/32.png) [@Aankh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aankh)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2003, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-resources-for-book-recommendations/203264/3 "2003-09-23T11:18:04Z")

</div>

You might also want to follow the winners of the [National Book Foundation Award](http://www.nationalbook.org/nbawinners.html).